A typical Wi-Fi network is deployed with control equipment known as wireless access points (APs), i.e., base stations (BSs) or hot spots. The wireless APs provide service provisioning involving physical support for wired and wireless networks, bridging and routing between network equipment, and connection and release of the connection between network equipment.
Wi-Fi direct is a technology for enabling direct communication between Wi-Fi terminals without intervention of Wi-Fi APs that support connections between Wi-Fi terminals. A Wi-Fi terminal discovers a peer Wi-Fi terminal by device discovery and detects an intended service type by service discovery, thereby establishing a connection for Wi-Fi direct communication with the peer Wi-Fi terminal.
After device discovery, the Wi-Fi terminal may determine whether the discovered peer Wi-Fi terminal supports a specific service by service discovery, for Wi-Fi direct communication. The service discovery only supports acquisition of information about service types supported by the peer Wi-Fi terminal. Therefore, even though the transmitting terminal acquires information about the services supported by the receiving terminal, it does not have knowledge of the receiving terminal's intention as to whether it will receive a specific file or service from the transmitting terminal.
After allowing a device connection with the transmitting terminal, the receiving terminal does not know information (e.g. the name, file type, and the like) about the specific file or service until it starts to receive the file or service from the transmitting terminal. If the receiving terminal does not want to receive the file or service, the receiving terminal can cancel reception of the file or service during file transmission after a Wi-Fi direct connection has already been established between the transmitting terminal and the receiving terminal.
In other words, Wi-Fi direct provides a peer-to-peer connectivity to allow users to connect their devices in an easy and convenient manner to share, show, print, and synchronize content. Wi-Fi direct devices can use probe request frame and probe response frame to discover Wi-Fi devices in the proximity, and then use P2P service discovery query/response frames to find supporting services in these devices. Once a Wi-Fi direct device finds a matching service(s) in a target peer device, the device proceeds with setting up a P2P connection with the peer device.